E-Verify

07/04/2011

If you thought the do-it-yourself anti-immigrant schemes couldn’t get any more repellent, you were wrong. New laws in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina are following — and in some ways outdoing — Arizona’s attempt to engineer the mass expulsion of the undocumented, no matter the damage to the Constitution, public safety, local economies and immigrant families.

The laws vary in their details but share a common strategy: to make it impossible for people without papers to live without fear.

They give new powers to local police untrained in immigration law. They force businesses to purge work forces and schools to check students’ immigration status. And they greatly increase the danger of unreasonable searches, false arrests, racial profiling and other abuses, not just against immigrants, but anyone who may look like some officer’s idea of an illegal immigrant.

The laws empower local police officers to demand the documents of people they meet, and to detain those they suspect are here illegally. That means they can make warrantless arrests for assumed civil immigration violations, a stunning abuse of power.

The laws also make it illegal to give a ride to the undocumented, so a son could land in jail for driving his mother to the supermarket, or a church volunteer for ferrying families to a soup kitchen. They require businesses to check employees against the error-plagued federal E-Verify database, and to fire those who are flagged as unauthorized. Once the purge takes hold in agriculture, there will be no one left to pick onions, peaches and cotton. The immigrant labor shortage is already being felt in Georgia, where crops are rotting and the governor has called for using jobless ex-convicts in the fields.

Alabama’s law is the most extreme. It forces public school districts to determine the immigration status of students and their parents and report the data to the state. Alabama still can’t bar them from enrolling, since the Supreme Court declared in Plyler v. Doe that all children are entitled to a public education. The state’s law seems designed to challenge that ruling, as it turns school officials into de facto immigration agents and impels frightened parents to keep their children home.

It has long been clear that America is suffering for lack of a well-functioning immigration system that better protects workers and families, promotes lawfulness at the border and in the workplace, and gives hardworking people a path to legality.

Congress’s inaction has let the states run amok with their own destructive ideas. Supporters insist they are only trying to enforce the law. But trying to catch and deport 11 million people is lunacy. The damage to this country — its citizens and its laws — is enormous.

Civil rights organizations are suing or threatening to sue to block these noxious state laws. So far federal courts have enjoined parts of bad local laws in Arizona, Georgia, Utah and Indiana. President Obama’s Department of Justice has sued Arizona but not the other states. It needs to fight harder.

06/02/2011

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last week upholding an Arizona law that punishes employers who hire [undocumented] immigrants may give Texas lawmakers some newfound momentum to file immigration-related legislation with the hope that the governor adds the topic to the special session now underway.

Gov. Rick Perry called the special session Monday to finish work on the 2012-13 budget. He added congressional redistricting to the call Tuesday. Some lawmakers anticipate immigration will be added to the agenda soon — and on Tuesday, state Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, filed House Bill 9, the “sanctuary cities” legislation that failed to get to the floor of the Senate for debate in the regular session.

In Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting, the high court ruled 5-3 on May 26 that the federal government’s Immigration Reform and Control Act did not preempt the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a bill the state passed in 2007.

The state law would allow the Arizona government to revoke the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and mandates use of the federal electronic employment verification system called E-Verify to verify employment. The system is managed by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services and compares the information that workers submit to an employer on an I-9 — the federal document that collects employment-eligibility information — to records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Currently only businesses with federal contracts are required to use the system.

* * *

More than a dozen bills relating to the use of E-Verify were filed in Texas during the regular legislative session that ended Monday, but all failed to make it to the Senate or House floor for a debate. State Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, said lawmakers from both sides of the aisle had concerns about the accuracy of the program and said he would recommend an interim study to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. This week, he said, there was “no question” the Supreme Court's decision would add more momentum to those discussions.

“There was a desire to get an E-Verify bill out and that’s what we tried to do," he said. "We also tried to be thoughtful about the testimony and all the challenges that are around this issue."

The bill that made the most headway was HB 3252 by state Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. It failed to make the calendar but was voted out of committee after members agreed it was the most workable proposal. The bill would prohibit employers from hiring unauthorized workers. A person who believes an employer is breaking the law would be able to file a complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission. Employers could avoid sanctions if they received what they believed was proper documentation verifying legal status that turned out to be false or if the employer verified the information through E-Verify.

“We did not take the enforcement side from [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]” in the bill,” Chisum said. “They could continue to work for the employer without fear of being arrested.” He said he plans to re-file the bill if immigration is added to the call this summer.

* * *

But some business leaders and immigration attorneys are warning that state governments should not interpret the court’s decision as a blank check to file broader immigration legislation.

“It’s a very narrow decision. It fits in to the exception or the exemption for licensing laws,” said Dan Kowalski, an immigration attorney with the Austin-based Fowler Law Firm and editor of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. “I am afraid too many state legislators won’t pay too close attention.” Instead, Kowalski said, lawmakers should wait for the court’s decision on Arizona’s SB 1070, the now-famous law passed in 2010 that allows for local enforcement of immigration laws.

Bill Hammond, the executive director of the Texas Association of Business and a former Republican state representative, said the decision could hurt legitimate businesses in Texas.

“Just because the court said it’s okay does not make it a good idea. It’s still a bad idea,” he said. “Historically and traditionally immigration has been a federal issue, as it should be. However, a ruling like that can give impetus to those who would see legislation like that in Texas or elsewhere.”

05/05/2011

Despite the growing clamor for Texas businesses to adopt a federal employment verification system that some say would clamp down on the hiring of illegal immigrants, state lawmakers say they need more time to evaluate the system.

More than a dozen bills have been filed that pertain to E-Verify, which is managed by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services and compares the information that potential workers submit to an employer on their I-9 — a federal document that collects employment-eligibility information — to records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

But analyses of the bills by the Legislative Budget Board — and concerns some employers and lawmakers have over what they say is a flawed system — have prevented the bills from being passed out of committee.

05/02/2011

AUSTIN — Business interests, including small contractors and GOP stalwarts, have raised concerns that could derail proposals to fine or lock up employers who hire illegal immigrants, Rep. Byron Cook, chairman of a top House committee, said Thursday.

Measures before the House State Affairs Committee would require employers to use the federal E-Verify system or make other good-faith efforts before hiring new workers, to ensure they are citizens or authorized to work in the U.S.

The toughest bill, by Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make intentionally hiring an illegal immigrant subject to jail time, although family maids and gardeners were exempted.

* * *

It’s part of a broad effort in the House to tackle illegal immigration, with measures that would challenge automatic U.S. citizenship for children born on American soil to illegal immigrants, and resolutions exhorting Congress to do a better job of securing the borders.

But when it comes to employment verification, businesses are pushing back. A steady stream of people testified that the E-Verify system is flawed, has too many false-positives and can be easily skirted by businesses that claim their workers are “independent contractors” not subject to the system.

* * *

Only a few people spoke in favor of the bills, saying the state should punish those who offer the jobs that attract immigrants and keep them in the country illegally. The bills were left pending in the committee.

02/28/2011

Last session, [75-year old state Rep. Leo Berman's, R-Tyler] bills — like the one restricting illegal immigrants to certain geographical regions or another denying them access to higher education — failed to gain traction in the roughly evenly divided House. But with this session’s Republican supermajority, it could very well be the session of Leo.

* * *

He has filed his own version of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, as well as bills mandating that employers verify employees’ legal status electronically, making English the state’s official language and eliminating birthright citizenship — an issue he hopes provokes a lawsuit he can take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another bill would add an 8 percent surcharge on money wired back to Latin America, which he would earmark for hospitals providing free health care to illegal immigrants — who Berman says are bringing in drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, polio, plague and leprosy.

(According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, the only incident of plague in Texas in the last decade was in 2006, and it was contracted during a hunting trip in New Mexico. The most recent case of polio in Texas, contracted during an individual’s travels abroad, was in 1995.)

“We want to make things not uncomfortable, but do things in such a way that they’re going to self-deport,” Berman said.

A first-generation American, Berman knows the significance of immigration in the country’s history. His parents came through Ellis Island in the 1920s — his father from Latvia and his mother from Poland. They learned English, opened a business and flourished. “That was a long time ago,” Berman said. “Now, we have no Ellis Island. We just have a wide-open southern border where people are climbing through the fence, and they are illegal aliens.”

Berman’s stance puts him uncharacteristically at odds with members of the state’s conservative business community, like Texas Association of Business President Bill Hammond, who believes immigration reform is a federal matter. “I think most of what’s being proposed is unconstitutional,” Hammond said. “The Constitution is pretty clear that immigration is a federal matter. I hold Rep. Berman in very high regard and consider him a friend, and as friends will do from time to time, we disagree in this area.”

Berman’s immigration bills, and their heightened chances of moving this session, are one factor that led state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who is as liberal as Berman is conservative, to call this “the most racist session of the Texas Legislature in a quarter of a century.” Not since the mid-20th century, Burnam said, has the state seen so much legislation focused at subjugating a community of color. “All of this legislation is really directed that way,” he said. “Everybody knows it. They can pretend like it’s not, but it is.”

See also, Texas Tribune article by Ross Ramsey about immigration and the growing Texas hispanic population.

02/24/2011

The latest bill addressing illegal immigration and the hiring of undocumented workers in Texas would broaden the scope of employers subject to scrutiny — and extend the penalties for violators to include possible jail time and thousands of dollars in fines. Exempt from the proposed rule? People who hire undocumented workers as domestic helpers in their family homes.

House Bill 1202, authored by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make it a state jail felony to knowingly hire undocumented workers in Texas. The bill would punish those who “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hire or contract with an "unauthorized alien", or with someone who knowingly subcontracts with an undocumented worker. The maximum fine is $10,000, and guilty parties could face a stint in prison of 180 days to two years. (Riddle has also filed HB 17, legislation that would make being in the state illegally a trespassing offense.)

There are exemptions in HB 1202, however, including one that could make the proposal more acceptable to House Republicans concerned with the federal electronic employment verification system known as E-Verify. While several Republicans have filed bills mandating the use of E-Verify, others suggest it has proven flaws and could potentially act as a deterrent to otherwise capable and legal applicants. Riddle's bill doesn't specify E-Verify and says employers have an out if they make a concerted effort to verify status in any manner "that is more likely than not to produce a correct and reliable result."

* * *

There is also an exception for domestic help. People who hire or contract with someone for work “exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence" are off the hook.

02/10/2011

Since 1986, controlling illegal immigration by regulating who is entitled to work in the United States has been a key component of U.S. immigration policy. The ritual of showing proof of one’s identity and work authorization and filling out an I-9 form is part of every new hire’s paperwork haze.

First piloted in 1997 and known as the Basic Pilot, an electronic employment-verification program has been used as a complement to the paperwork process—an effort to use technology to improve compliance. Now known as E-Verify, the program is a federal, web-based program through which U.S. businesses can attempt to verify the work authorization of new hires. E-Verify is primarily a voluntary system. However, the federal government requires that all of its contractors use it, and some states have made it mandatory as well.

E-Verify is a compliance mechanism. But, somewhere along the way, it became confused with a deportation strategy. Calls for mandatory E-Verify tend to portray the program as a solution to our illegal immigration problem, and a way to generate jobs for unemployed Americans.

The reality is quite different. Mandatory E-Verify without comprehensive immigration reform will not end illegal immigration, free up jobs for unemployed Americans, or save the country money. In fact, studies of E-Verify predict the opposite.